* * * *

Ushered into Miss Mann's little parlour, Caroline found her, as she
always found her, surrounded by perfect neatness, cleanliness, and
comfort (after all, is it not a virtue in old maids that solitude rarely
makes them negligent or disorderly?)--no dust on her polished furniture,
none on her carpet, fresh flowers in the vase on her table, a bright
fire in the grate. She herself sat primly and somewhat grimly-tidy in a
cushioned rocking-chair, her hands busied with some knitting. This was
her favourite work, as it required the least exertion. She scarcely rose
as Caroline entered. To avoid excitement was one of Miss Mann's aims in
life. She had been composing herself ever since she came down in the
morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic state of tranquillity
when the visitor's knock at the door startled her, and undid her day's
work. She was scarcely pleased, therefore, to see Miss Helstone. She
received her with reserve, bade her be seated with austerity, and when
she got her placed opposite, she fixed her with her eye.

This was no ordinary doom--to be fixed with Miss Mann's eye. Robert
Moore had undergone it once, and had never forgotten the circumstance.

He considered it quite equal to anything Medusa could do. He professed
to doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what
it was before--whether there was not something stony in its texture. The
gaze had had such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the
apartment and house; it had even sent him straightway up to the rectory,
where he had appeared in Caroline's presence with a very queer face, and
amazed her by demanding a cousinly salute on the spot, to rectify a
damage that had been done him.

Certainly Miss Mann had a formidable eye for one of the softer sex. It
was prominent, and showed a great deal of the white, and looked as
steadily, as unwinkingly, at you as if it were a steel ball soldered in
her head; and when, while looking, she began to talk in an indescribably
dry, monotonous tone--a tone without vibration or inflection--you felt
as if a graven image of some bad spirit were addressing you. But it was
all a figment of fancy, a matter of surface. Miss Mann's goblin grimness
scarcely went deeper than the angel sweetness of hundreds of beauties.
She was a perfectly honest, conscientious woman, who had performed
duties in her day from whose severe anguish many a human Peri,
gazelle